Steam?

[Gyges]

I as well am rather peeved that Steam won't allow you to choose your install location (i.e. my external hard drive) thus my meager laptop hard drive is full.

[shinygerbil]

That's probably the one time where running it through Wine might be superior

[wwarnick]

As an added point to the conversation think of Wolfenstien 3D and Doom, (some people still don't realize or even remember this) they were both released as Shareware and developed as indie titles by indie developers...

The reason some people don't realize it or even remember it is because it wasn't so.  Both games were published by Apogee, as was their first game, Commander Keen.  Their only indie title was a PC port of Mario Bros 3, which was never released.  And there were four members, not two.

...who's to say Aquaria won't get noticed without it?

Another Introversion example.  Introversion has stated more than once that Steam singlehandedly got their company back on its feet.  I would argue that the majority of the people out there don't read the gaming mags, and of those that do, many only read about games they are interested in and skip the rest.  Fact is, Steam introduces indie games to non-indie gamers.  That's exactly how I discovered them, and to this day I wouldn't have if it weren't for steam.

[thechef]

I as well am rather peeved that Steam won't allow you to choose your install location (i.e. my external hard drive) thus my meager laptop hard drive is full.

I guess you can circumvent that "Usability-Error" of Steam on Windows too. I don't know if the Filemanager and Filesystem provide the comfort of symlinks, but you can mount a harddisk to a directory. Maybe you can also mount a directory of your external drive to a steam subdirectory (that's "bind mounting" on linux).

Topic: I use steam, but i really prefer a normal downloadable version, because I really think that Steam still has some serious Usability problems. Also, i don't think that you can (already) distribute linux-games over steam and as soon as a linux-version is available i'd prefer to use the native version and i could run into problems trying to convert the steam version into a (native) steam-independent version. I don't know if steam provides functionality for such use cases.

If you can, do both.

I had a flawless purchase when I bought Penumbra: Overture, so that's a good example, but when I bought Half-Life Episode 1it took weeks until it was correctly purchased, for some reason and that was the first purchase I made on steam.

[realyst]

NTFS allows symlinks....but badly and not using explorer.  Also, using them incorrectly can royally fark up your file table.  Not advised.

[Alec]

The way I got around that was by installing Steam on my other drive. I think it can only download stuff to the drive that its installed on.

[realyst]

Actually, that's half true.


A quick fix is to copy the Program Files folder to the drive you want to use.  You don't need to re-install, just run the exe from within the moved folder.  I did that to install Portal when my drive became full.  Not only that, but updates still install proper as well.  I'm not quite sure what it store on the registry but it appears to use relative paths for everything else.

[Doupi]

I would buy the game from anywhere as long as I am able to get it from Bulgaria <- Thats were I live. Steam would be the fastest way to get the game for me, I think. But if there was an option to buy the game (not from Steam) and receive a hard copy later (with manual, poster ect...) I will definitely choose it over the option with Steam...

[Assault]

I'd rather not touch Steam as well. I'm going to buy the Collectors Edition from the Website.





"Collectors Edition... WTF?"
I bet that's what you just said to yourself.

[KingAl]

"Collector's Edition... FTW!"

[Assault]

"Collector's Edition... FTW!"

I was so close... if it weren't for you meddling kids!

[lucifon]

I myself love Steam simply because it is THE reason i've got into Indie games. I would have never looked at some of the titles twice if it wern't for them being on steam. I enjoy adding games to my Steam list too, personally I love the service. Back at launch indeed there were many problems but for this past year the service has really taken off. I haven't had any problems.

I'm holding out buying Aquaria because i like to have a solid client which allows me to download the game & install it so simply etc. Not to mention that on Steam games usually get a discount on launch or a lower price-point. Maybe im a cheapskate.. But i saw Aquaria on the 1UpShow. I had never heard of the game but as soon as i heard them say it was a PC Indie game i was intrigued. After watching the show i thought hey ill pop over to their site and check out more info on the game then maybe ill drop $20 on it. However when i got to the site seeing that the game was $30 was a huge surprise to me. Considering i just got UT3 for £18 - a game thats been developed for years by a huge team with millions and millions spent on it. Okay okay its hard to compare the  games, they are completely different. But its simply the principles of it which throw me off.

After reading up some reviews of the games many of the reviewers pointed out exactly what I thought - that $30 is abit too steep for an indie game, however all of the review's did seem to strongly praise the game  Many indie games for me are impulse buys, i dont expect them, but when they pop up and look interesting I think "hey what the hell its only a tenner" (from the UK) and I go off and buy them. It wouldn't surprise me if this price point is scaring off alot of people which are now learning about the game from places such as the 1upshow.

Anychance of a christmas discount I know you want to! Haha but even after those streams of text, depending on what kind of cash balance i'm looking at from Xmas, my love for indie games and indie developers will most likely persuade me to buy the game and support you guys. But my point still stands that for alot of impulse buyers and interested gamers the pricepoint, being almost a third higher than any Indie game ive seen, will scare them off.

Edit : Cheer for first post